A temail is a text email. An email in Plain Text. It is what an email should be. Emails were not intended to be gaudy headlines but purveyors of information. That is fast, quick, personal and practical: they are quite simply the mail –  as in a letter – version of the internet. The idea that it could call in other content from another continent is anathema to a considered and personal form of communication. Email should not be trying to emulate the internet browser experience. Never mind also including hidden trackers, that is just plain abusive. Just so you know, most commercial emails contain trackers, and yes it should be banned, and yes we are being abused.

One way of stopping this is to stop “Loading Remote Content”. There is probably an option to do this in your Email Preferences, hidden away somewhere. On OSX Mojave go to Mail/Preferences/Viewing and halfway down the page switch off “Load remote content in messages”. You will then have a button so you can view the remote content if and when you wish. This should be how email works, and in effect it once was – there was no “rich content”. Our internet overlords have allowed email to become a pipeline for spam, random advertising, tracking and malware.

Another problem, which you can cure to some extent, is the false or no-reply address email. To me, any email where you cannot reply to the actual sender should be banned, it is just plain rude. Many spam emails also have a false sender, so make sure the return path of the email is visible in the Header. If it does not match the sender press Delete asap. Edit the “Show Message Headers” option in your email preferences to show the Return-Path. Again this is not usually the default, when it should be.

Emails are of course wonderful things containing the world of letters, discourses and eventually lives. It is still an open medium (although Google and Apple etc. wish it wasn’t) and as a photographer I do use it sometimes to send small photographs. These photographs are not remote content, they are part of the original email. But if it was just temail, a text only medium, I would not object. You would know just what you signed up for, something effective and utilitarian. Nothing hidden.

In more general terms, if you do not have access to a discrete mailbox with your own domain, I usually recommend gmail. Although it has not always played well with OSX, it is still free, deletes spam and is usually reliable. Just remember Google is reading, tracking and in effect censoring your emails. Also remember that with any IMAP email system that most of your email is being stored in the cloud, not locally, unless you specify otherwise. Old emails are likely to be “pruned” (that is deleted) at some point. There are always limits, Google currently allows 15GB of storage which sounds like a lot, but may not be enough after many years usage.

Meanwhile always log out of everything you can, while logged in they are tracking you, ‘cos you invited them! The worst offenders in this regard are Facebook, Google and Amazon. If you don’t believe me, feel free to spend half your life reading Terms and Conditions, Cookie Settings and GDPR documents.

 Support temail !

PS. I made up the term temail, I hope you know what I mean.